haiku. poetry.

Recollection

Friday the 13th and I can’t believe my luck. I got a fifty-mile ride with someone who didn’t care if I smoked—lit up himself—told me some pretty good stories about being young and dumb, didn’t ask me to explain myself, and didn’t try to give me any money. Dropped me off where I told him to, didn’t argue that there’s nothing there, what do I want to go there for? I like nothing, is what I usually say.

leaf fall the train whistle louder

But it’s a long walk from nowhere to nowhere and I’ve let my pack get too heavy these days and the part of my back that likes to remind me I’m only human was doing its thing and then it started to rain. So there I am, cursing Friday the 13th as if I believed in something, which believe me I don’t.

bow season— the forest doesn’t know where I am

Wasn’t too long though before I saw a barn. I walked around it until I found the place where it was easy to get in—every barn has one. That’s the good thing about nowhere, it’s full of holes. Slipped in where it was even darker than the dark outside. Couldn’t find my flashlight in the dark—that’s the trouble with flashlights—so just curled up in a convenient corner with my pack for a pillow and went to sleep before you could say half-assed superstition.

another supermoon I flip my mattress

In the night I woke and thought I heard snoring and wondered if some other poor idiot had come in out of the rain. Thought I’d scramble out in the morning, if I could, before he woke up and decided to pick a fight about squatter’s rights. Well. I was awake about the second the black turned to gray, and got to my feet feeling pretty good about the fact that it was now Saturday the 14th. Didn’t waste any time grabbing my pack and rushing for the door. But made the mistake of looking back. Never look back.

roadside weeds initial here to indicate acceptance

I’m still not sure if that thing was real. If I were imagining it, would it have been snoring? If it were real, wouldn’t I have heard about it by now? A giant woman twelve feet tall? You tell me why it wouldn’t be in all the papers. You tell me. Just sleeping in a barn like a hobo traveling from nowhere to nowhere. I got out of there without taking a second look but still, still, I wonder what the hell was the story there.